Rational Worship

I wonder if you read that title, Rational Worship, and thought I had lost my mind. After all, worship, real, heart-wrenching, God is amazingly awesome worship, hardly appears rational.

Maybe you are one of those analytical people who wants to calculate everything you do. You know, write a list and cross things off to feel like you have accomplished something. I wonder, then, if that’s how you view your Christian walk. Are there to-do lists?

It kind of makes me laugh because I am so not a list maker. I don’t create to-do lists because I am a complete scatterbrain, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants woman. So, when someone steps into my life and tries to make logical orderly sense of it all, it’s a bit hard to digest.

This isn’t to say that organization is a bad thing.

Punk Princess: Brunn Hilda

God knows we creative people need someone to come in and align our creativity with success. I mean, creative people are great at ideas and making things, writing, and speaking, and throwing stuff together at the last minute, but if someone isn’t there to help them hone that incessant brain chatter in, well, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Trust me, I know.

By: Hobvias Sudoneighm

I have a stack of writing that is literally as tall as my hip. But because I lack anything in the realm of keeping stuff in order, well, it’s just been adding up doing nothing for the Kingdom. I certainly need some rational organization. Any takers?

But the real truth is, maybe I need some rational worship. Maybe you do too?

So, imagine my surprise when I finally broke down Romans 12:1. Let me tell you, that chapter has been slapping me in the face lately. There’s so much in it and well…here’s what I wrote about it on Sunday before church:

I’ve read this verse several times trying to grasp its
meaning. We often hear about presenting our bodies as living sacrifices and maybe we understand the concept, or maybe we just think we do.

But, how many times have we paid attention to the latter part of that verse? Presenting our bodies as a sacrifice is our spiritual worship. So, giving up the flesh is a spiritual declaration of God’s greatness…

At least that’s what my ESV says, but when I dig deeper, I find that it’s “reasonable service,” in the KJV. And the Greek there is logikos,meaning rational (logical), reasonable of the Word. And service is latreia, meaning ministration of God that is worship, divine service.

So, when we sacrifice our flesh, say “No” to those worldly wants and desires, we are, in effect, logically and rationally reacting to the effect of His Word on our life. We are giving Him glory for all He’s done to change who we are and what’s important to us.

If that’s true, and it is, I have to wonder how many of us are truly living in reasonable service. Can other people see our spiritual worship, our rational worship, by the things we deny in the flesh?